Cricut BrightPad Review

I love glitter vinyl! It’s a perfect way to add mess-free sparkle. But if you’ve worked with glitter v inyl before, you know it can be kind of a pain to weed. The way the light bounces off the bits of glitter makes it really hard to see the cut lines. In some cases, pretty much impossible!
Take this piece for example. It has a whole pattern cut in it, but you can’t see it at all.

Enter the Cricut BrightPad, and it seems nearly magical. The BrightPad is a durable light-up surface that lets you see all your cut lines. Look at the difference it makes when I put the cut vinyl on the BrightPad and turn it on. Now I can see all my lines and easily weed out the extra vinyl.

Adjustable brightness helps you get the perfect amount of light for tracing, or weeding, or anything else. The scratchproof surface means you can use all your favorite weeding tools without worrying about scratching it. Speaking of weeding tools, did you know Cricut makes a whole weeding tool kit? There’s the classic Weeder, the Hook Weeder which is great for tricky things like glitter vinyl, Fine Tweezers to hold delicate vinyl, and remove larger vinyl pieces with the Hook Tweezers and the Piercing Tool for either lifting or placing pieces.

So what did I do with my glitter vinyl when I was finished weeding? I decided to decorate my school binder. I’m getting closer to graduation, but still have one semester left of actual classes (then it’s on to my senior project.) I like keeping notes and schedules of all my classes in one binder, and loved this quote from Albert Einstein. “Creativity is Intelligence having fun.” It seemed to perfectly match my web design major – I’m learning design principles and communication skills, but get to explore lots of creative avenues with it.

The BrightPad will also help you more easily weed other adhesive and iron-on vinyl. Would you be more excited about weeding if you had a BrightPad too?

Stephanie Paxman is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.